One first-rate boon New Zealand colonists had--good health. Out of four thousand people in Canterbury in 1854 but twenty-one were returned as sick or infirm. It almost seemed that but for drink and drowning there need be no deaths. In Taranaki, in the North Island, among three thousand people in 1858-59 there was not a funeral for sixteen months. Crime, too, was pleasantly rare in the settlements. When Governor Grey, in 1850, appointed Mr. Justice Stephen to administer law in Otago, that zealous judge had nothing to do for eighteen months, except to fine defaulting jurors who had been summoned to try cases which did not exist and who neglected to attend to try them. Naturally the settlers complained that he did not earn his £800 a year of salary. His office was abolished, and for seven years the southern colonists did very well without a judge. Great was the shock to the public mind when in March, 1855, a certain Mackenzie, a riever by inheritance doubtless, "lifted" a thousand sheep in a night from the run of a Mr. Rhodes near Timaru, in South Canterbury, and disappeared with them among the Southern Alps. When he was followed and captured, it was found that he had taken refuge in a bleak but useful upland plain, a discovery of his which bears his name to this day. He was set on horseback, with his hands tied, and driven to Christchurch, 150 miles, by captors armed with loaded pistols. That he was a fellow who needed such precautions was shown by three bold dashes for freedom, which he afterwards made when serving a five years' sentence. At the third of these attempts he was shot at and badly wounded. Ultimately, he was allowed to leave the country. A sheep-stealer might easily have fallen into temptation in Canterbury at that time. In three years the settlers owned 100,000 sheep; in four more half a million. Somewhat slower, the Otago progress was to 223,000 in ten years.